What is child maintenance?

Child maintenance is about providing help with a child's everyday living costs. This includes things like food and clothes, and helping to provide a home for your child or children.

Child maintenance is usually money that the parent without the main day-to-day care of a child pays to the other parent. However, sharing the care of your children and buying things directly for them can also be included in a family-based child maintenance arrangement, if both parents agree to it.

It's essential that both parents work together to agree what's right for them and their children.

Why child maintenance is important

At the moment you may feel unable to discuss child maintenance with the other parent or, you just might not want to.

However, child maintenance can make a real difference to children as it can help pay for things like clothing, food and other essentials. It can also help to keep both parents involved with their children's lives.

Whatever type of maintenance arrangement you put in place, it's important to remember that it can help to give a child the best start in life and continues until your child reaches adulthood.

It's also important to remember that paying child maintenance for your child is a legal responsibility.

Representatives – applying for maintenance

A person can elect a representative to act on their behalf in respect of their Child Maintenance case. That person may receive all the correspondence that would normally be sent to the client, act on their behalf in respect of reporting changes of circumstance and make an application for maintenance in the first instance.

If the representative is not someone who is legally qualified (e.g. a lawyer, barrister or legal executive), written authorisation from the person they are seeking to represent must be provided before they can act on their behalf.

They will be asked to pay any application fee for joining the statutory scheme.

When making an application on behalf of a client, they will need to provide all the same details that a client would be required to provide to proceed with a case – information about the client themselves, their children and sufficient information about the other party to the case, to allow for them to be identified.

The client themselves would still need to have the Gateway conversation with Child Maintenance Options.

What child maintenance isn't

There are a lot of misconceptions about child maintenance. Here are a few examples:

"Child maintenance just means getting money through the Child Support Agency or Child Maintenance Service."

Most separated parents can arrange child maintenance between themselves – either privately through a family-based arrangement or through a Child Maintenance Service 'Direct Pay' arrangement. The Child Support Agency stopped taking new applications in November 2013.

The statutory child maintenance service is for separated parents who can't sort out child maintenance between themselves and, they will only get involved if a parent asks them to.

"Child maintenance is a way of punishing absent parents."

People often use the phrase absent parent, especially absent father, unfairly. Child maintenance shouldn’t be a weapon to use against parents who, for whatever reason, live apart from their child.

Most separated parents recognise that helping with the cost of a child’s upkeep is just one of the responsibilities of being a parent, no matter where the child lives.

"Child maintenance is a kind of state benefit."

Child maintenance isn't a benefit that separated parents can "claim" from the state. It's paid by the other parent, and is a way of making sure both parents contribute to their child’s upkeep when they live apart. When a family-based arrangement isn't possible, separated parents can use the statutory child maintenance service.

If you need help sorting out child maintenance

Nearly all separated parents agree that both parents should pay towards the upkeep of their children. But making arrangements for children after separation isn't always easy.